A new history at Seattle Weekly

Old-timers bid farewell as paper shifts its focus

Editor Knute Berger is among at least 11 employees who recently left Seattle Weekly.

Editor Knute Berger is among at least 11 employees who recently left Seattle Weekly.

Photo: Scott Eklund/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Photo: Scott Eklund/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

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Editor Knute Berger is among at least 11 employees who recently left Seattle Weekly.

Editor Knute Berger is among at least 11 employees who recently left Seattle Weekly.

Photo: Scott Eklund/Seattle Post-Intelligencer

A new history at Seattle Weekly

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(Editor's Note: This story has been altered. Former Seattle Weekly publisher Terry Coe now works at Seattle Business Monthly and Northwest Meetings and Events, publications of Tiger Oak Publishing. The original version of this story listed an incorrect magazine as his employer. Also, the year Seattle Weekly was founded was incorrect. It began publishing in 1976.)

At first glance, most regular Seattle Weekly readers won't notice the change. Popular long-news features will remain, same for staples such as listings and reviews.

Even Mossback, the Weekly's lead column and soapbox for longtime editor Knute "Skip" Berger, might keep its slot in the paper's first few pages.

In this case, however, outside appearances are deceiving. The city's largest alternative paper is undergoing perhaps the most significant restructuring of both staff and editorial direction in its 29-year history.

The liberal paper's owner of eight months, Village Voice Media (formerly known as New Times), has begun to shape the publication in its image: hard-hitting, magazine-style journalism and humor with less political flavor and turn-of-the-screw coverage of issues.

Less squishy Seattle. More edgy East Coast.

Gone are editor Berger and managing editor Chuck Taylor, along with politics and city government writers George Howland Jr. and Geov Parrish, and seven other news staff members. An equal number of staff members left the advertising department since the takeover. Berger, Taylor and Howland said their goodbyes at a staff party Wednesday in the paper's Pioneer Square offices. Parrish, a longtime regular freelancer, notified the staff Tuesday via e-mail.

"The paper was going to de-emphasize political coverage," Parrish, 46, said in an interview, adding that he was worried the paper would care more about entertaining than informing. "I had a conversation with (new management) and it was fairly evident I wasn't in the company's long-term plans."

Expected to also disappear are political endorsements and regular beat assignments. New managing editor Mike Seely, 32, said the 100,000-circulation weekly will "shift toward story-telling rather than (only) giving people the facts."

Seely disputed the claim that the paper would cut back on political stories. "We'll have less commentary, not less coverage."

"More like writing a screenplay than a classic journalism structure," he said, adding that his "ideal" is transforming the Weekly into "a local New Yorker."

The Weekly, he said, is going to be better, more dynamic, funnier and edgier. Village Voice Media, the 17-weekly chain formed when Phoenix-based New Times purchased the six-weekly New York chain eight months ago, has a reputation for aggressive, award-winning reporting, he said. The Weekly, he said, will reflect that reputation.

"Not that we are not doing some of that now," he said. "I'd like more. I'd like for the paper to be more freewheeling and humorous. I don't want us to feel obligated to cover anything."

Seely, a well-regarded reporter who worked as a writer at the Weekly and at a sister paper in St. Louis, said he understands the unease that's gripped the newsroom during the change. He noted that everyone who left did so at their choosing. "It's not like anyone was fired," he said.

This hasn't eased staff worry. The weekly's Phoenix-based owners have yet to name an editor-in-chief. Other changes, said Andy Vandevoorde, the chain's executive associate editor, will be coming in a few weeks. He declined to specify.

Writer Philip Dawdy said it's been an emotional time for the staff, particularly with the exodus of Taylor and Berger, a prototypical traditional Seattle liberal who has been associated with the paper for 17 years.

"These are guys who've been great bosses to me; they are the best guys I've ever worked for," he said. "With them gone, there's unknowns."

Media watchers said New Times had a reputation for high-quality work and excellent writing in papers it owns in San Francisco, Miami, Denver, St. Louis and Phoenix, among others. When it bought the Village Voice, Seattle Weekly and four other weeklies, it became the nation's largest chain of alternative weeklies.

The transition into a large chain hasn't always been easy. Founded in 1955, the Village Voice has had three editors-in-chief since the change of ownership. One resigned after visiting the newsroom once. Staff members in New York have openly criticized the new owners for taking a heavy hand in editorial decisions, backing off on arts coverage and not leaving story decisions to local editors.

Jack Shafer, a media critic for the online magazine Slate, worked as a New Times editor for one year, beginning in 1996. He said the chain's reputation for good journalism is well deserved, but the purchase of the six weeklies was "an enormous pig for the python to swallow."

"I would counsel people to have a little patience," he said. "It takes a little time to change a paper."

Some former and current Seattle Weekly staff members suspect that this will also mean going for younger readers -- a strength of its weekly rival, The Stranger. If so, it isn't the first time the Weekly has coveted Stranger readers, who on average are a decade younger than the Weekly's average readership age of 41.

In the late 1990s, the paper made a concerted push to get more hip and edgy, recalled former Weekly staff member Fred Moody, who worked at the paper for 18 years. "It was depressing, like a middle-aged man hitting on his baby sitter," he said.

But Moody thinks new ownership will be good for the paper. The new owners "finally figured out they really needed someone in there with their editor's sense of mission and to break with the past."

That past began in 1976 with David Brewster, who founded the paper on the rubble of the original Seattle Magazine, a publication closer to Harper's than the current magazine of that name. Its stories were long, informed and serious. Too serious, critics said. Brewster didn't like pop music and it was years before the paper covered it.

Berger, 52, who had been with the paper off and on since 1993, and other editors altered much of that. When The Stranger began publishing in 1991, the paper went through periodic efforts to court loyal younger readers with limited success.

Stranger editor (and Weekly provocateur) Dan Savage isn't particularly worried. His response: Meet the new Weekly; same as the old Weekly.

Berger, who is negotiating to keep his column in the paper, Taylor and Parrish said they don't yet know what they'll do. Howland announced that he was going to work for the Seattle City Council. Many of the former staff members, including former Publisher Terry Coe, have moved to Tiger Oak Publishing, which publishes Seattle Business Monthly and Northwest Meetings and Events.

Berger and Taylor, 49, wanted the Weekly to weigh in regularly on the big stories of the day and structured the staff accordingly to provide not only larger, deeper cover pieces, such as Nina Shapiro's 2004 examination of problems with midwifery, but also with ongoing coverage of issues, such as the Monorail and local politics.

The new owners, Berger said, "generally eschew that approach. I think they see it as a city magazine."

For their part, Berger and Taylor said they respect the new owners and their vision for the paper. "It's just not the Weekly I signed up for," Taylor said.

Seely said the journalists will be missed. "They are class acts and have done great work here."